Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/126

104 than No. 2, may come along, and the same tragedy may be repeated. Can the result be called a true marriage? Surely not. Mr. Lang refers to the case of the Gorilla, where each male lives for a time with a female in solitary state. I feel great difficulty in understanding how under a solitary life any progress could be made; and have suggested the habits of the social Quadrumana, which live in often large troops, comprising several males, as probably more nearly resembling those of our ancestors.

I cannot, however, ask the Editor to find room for the evidence which I have brought forward in The Origin of Civilisation and in Marriage, Totemism, and Religion.

Origin of Marriage.—If, then, there was a time when the institution of marriage did not exist, how did it originate?

I have suggested that, if a man captured a woman from another tribe, he acquired a recognised right of possession. But, says Mr. Lang, how could this apply to marriage within the tribe? "When men took to capturing women within their own tribe, the tribe would be broken up by internal blood-feuds. A tribe which practised, as a rule, capture of brides within the tribe would be weakened by internal dispeace." Mr. Lang has referred to one or two cases in which I have overlooked passages of his. In this case he does not notice that, as long ago as 1866, I anticipated and answered, or attempted to answer, this objection. I referred to the numerous cases of what I called "expiation for marriage," in which the prior rights of the tribe were admitted and redeemed, before the marriage was recognised. When such arrangements were amicably made, the final ceremony was very generally a mock marriage by capture.

This symbol of marriage by capture is very widely distributed. It occurs in many Indian tribes, in the Malay Peninsula, among